"You should be gone before Harry does rounds."
"Too late." His voice is rough with sleep. "He walked past the window an hour ago."
I close my eyes. "Of course he did."
"He didn't knock."
"Small mercies."
Dutch turns his head to look at me. I look back. Neither of us pretends this is nothing.
"The deal was you'd leave," I say. "Old Hawk is dead. That was the agreement."
"You want me to go?"
I should say yes. I've been saying yes to the hard thing for three years and I'm good at it.
"No," I say.
He looks as if he just stopped holding his breath. I can see it in the way his shoulders relax. "Okay."
"I'm not saying what this is."
"I'm not asking you to."
"Dutch."
"Avery." He reaches over and tucks my hair back, fingers trailing along my jaw, easy and unhurried. "Go run your council meeting. I'll get coffee."
"Harry's going to be insufferable."
I get up. So does he. We move around each other in the small space without bumping into things, which tells me something I'm not ready to look at directly.
He leaves to get coffee. I get dressed. Through the window I can see the settlement waking up. There’s smoke from the cook fires, voices, the creak of the gate on its new hinges.
I let myself feel proud for exactly ten seconds.
Then I go run my settlement.
Jenna falls into step beside me during the morning check.
She appears at my elbow with that careful, watchful way she has, the one that used to mean she was mapping exits and now means something else. I'm still learning the difference.
We walk in silence. She's good at silence. Better than most adults.
"I want to do something useful," she says finally. "Not what I was doing before."
"You were useful yesterday. You held your post."
"I missed every shot."
"You called the second wave through the north gap. Three of my people were in position because of that." I look at her sideways. "That's not nothing."
She absorbs this. "I want to learn the medical building. Sarah let me help with the wounded and," She stops. "I didn't panic. I thought I would."
I think about what Old Hawk trained into her. Observation. Steadiness. The ability to walk into a place that wants to kill you and look calm. Those are her skills. She just spent years pointed in the wrong direction.
"Talk to Sarah," I say. "Tell her I sent you."
